Minor's potential could yield major benefits for the Royals

It's a sort of homecoming for Saturday's starting pitcher.

The first time Mike Minor came to Kansas City, he was damaged goods, a reclamation project. A promising career in Atlanta had been derailed by a torn labrum, the culmination of shoulder injuries that took his time with the Braves from promising to a non-tender after the 2015 season. 

He didn’t throw a pitch for the Royals in 2016 as he worked back in rehab. When 2017 rolled around, he was shunted off to the bullpen and became something of an oddity in modern baseball—the effective multi-inning reliever. The Rangers saw enough to give him a multi-year deal and a spot in their rotation, and he pitched effectively in 2018, was an All-Star in 2019 and then… 2020 happened. 

2020 happened to all of us in some fashion. For Minor, it manifested in a spiking walk rate, a career-worst home run rate, a mid-year trade and an overall league-average performance. Even his FIP/xFIP splits, which were about a run better than his actual ERA, put him as merely average. It was a rough year but for God’s sake, how many people DO YOU KNOW PERSONALLY that you can say that of or for? Athletes are human and subject to the same inconveniences that affect their performance as anyone else.

And so in the offseason, Minor came… not quite home, but back to something familiar, a place he had used to find himself once and could hope to do so again. It helps that the Royals don’t need the pseudo-ace version of Minor that popped up in 2019—anything equal to or better than the 2.5 fWAR posted in 2018, alongside the development of Brady Singer and Brad Keller and consistency of Danny Duffy, would be more than enough for the Royals to consider it $7 million well-spent. But Minor, who makes no bones about feeling a sense of obligation to Dayton Moore and the franchise that believed in him at a professional low point, is not the same guy and these are not the same Royals from his 2017 stint in Kansas City. 

For starters, Minor’s only season in Kansas City coincided with Dave Eiland’s final turn in Royal blue. It’s not exactly difficult to find fault with Eiland’s style or his results, except for the part where he was on the staff for pennant winners in 2014 and 2015. I’m not here to tell anyone that Dave Eiland made Mike Minor better or worse; nor am I here to speculate as to how Minor might fare working with Cal Eldred, whose tenure to this point is probably undecided but given that it was working through two lost seasons and a truncated 2020, it’s not that hard to give him a pass on what has transpired so far. 

But it’s clear that Minor comes in less as damaged goods, like his 2016-17 turn in Kansas City, and more at a career crossroads. If he had flamed out his first time around, it would’ve been off to retirement or Mexico or indy ball if he wanted to try and attempt to recapture the magic. This isn’t a career-defining season for Minor; he’s proven himself a still-capable pitcher at the big-league level. But can what worked in 2017 work again in 2021? 

Via Baseball Savant, Minor has gone away from the slider that, paired with his fastball, made him so effective in his multi-inning role as a Royal four years ago—those two pitches combined for around 80 percent of his throws the last time around in Kansas City. He’s ditched his sinker entirely but begun to rely more on his change, to pretty decent results—a pitch he used around 10 percent of the time as a Royal has actually been deployed more often than the slider his last two seasons, to good effect. Minor’s xBA has not exceeded .200 and xwOBA hasn’t been above .269 on that pitch since his departure from Kansas City. 

The slider has been hit considerably harder, including an xwOBA above .300 the last three seasons and a ghastly .702 slugging against in the admittedly small sample that was 2020. Maybe it indicates nothing—his spin rate on the pitch, after dropping precipitously in his first Texas season, steadied in 2019 and improved to just shy of 2800 RPM last season. His fastball, which has never blown anyone away, has consistently been among the highest spin rates in MLB and ranked among the 97th percentile in MLB a year ago. If I, an idiot on the internet, am understanding things correctly, a high-spin fastball even at average velocity gives it a rising effect to the opposing batter, so at Minor’s 2600 rpm average, the ball stays up longer, which leads to more flyballs which plays well in a cavernous park like Kauffman Stadium. 

Four-seam fastball spin rate, 2018-2020. Minimum 250 PA.

But maybe it indicates everything. Whatever Oakland’s stadium is called nowadays is a big park too, and Minor surrendered five homers in less than 20 innings and allowed a 112 tOPS+ there a year ago. 

Considering Minor one of the differences between not-bad and good, which is at least a possibility for the 2021 Royals, doesn’t require much imagination. If he’s 2019 Texas Good, the Royals ceiling is elevated. If he’s not, no one is coming to your house to take up a collection anyway. But even as his natural gifts might recede, Minor’s comfort in big parks and potential to diversify his offerings make him an intriguing bet on a team full of them.